


The Turning of Arthur

by M1ssUnd3rst4nd1ng



Category: Merlin (TV), Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: (but minor), Also serious warning, Alternate Universe - Fusion, And Merlin gets a booboo, Blood and Gore, But the rules of magic are mostly Merlin rules, Gen, Magic exists but is not widely known, Minor mostly non-explicit violence and some mild gore, No worse than either canon, Non-Graphic Violence, The Hale Fire still sorta happened, There's a dead body, Trouble exists and Merlin and Arthur will find it, Uther doesn't even show up in person but should still be warned for, Werewolves exist but are not widely known, except it's ALSO THE PURGE
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-18
Updated: 2020-04-18
Packaged: 2021-03-01 16:48:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,018
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23720362
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/M1ssUnd3rst4nd1ng/pseuds/M1ssUnd3rst4nd1ng
Summary: One brief adventure in the woods changes Arthur's and Merlin's lives forever. It just takes them a few days to realize it. Mild fusion of Merlin with the world of another fandom; knowledge of anything other than Merlin not necessary.
Relationships: Merlin & Arthur Pendragon (Merlin)
Kudos: 6





	The Turning of Arthur

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I do not own Merlin, Teen Wolf, or any of their respective characters, settings, or events; all rights belong to their respective creators.
> 
> Warning: mild, briefly described gore and violence (a part of the plot revolves around the discovery of a dead body that has been cut in half and around a teenage boy being attacked and bitten by what is presumed to be a wild animal; Arthur loses control of his temper and new-found strength and injures a friend on two separate occasions, one of the injuries is described and the other implied).  
> Please read with caution if you have any issues with violence or injury.
> 
> You do not have to have watched either show to understand the story, though I obviously recommend it because both are awesome; some knowledge of the characters of Merlin might be helpful, but is not necessary.

Arthur paused, absently stopping the swinging punching bag as he cocked his head to listen. There: a grunt, a clatter, the groaning of old wood construction; someone was prowling around the side of the house.

Arthur snatched up his bat and crept through the hall and down the stairs.

"Hey!" came a chipper voice just as a body shifted out of the shadows three feet from Arthur's elbow.

Arthur . . . didn't startle, he reacted to a perceived threat in a reasonable manner. And swung the bat, while stepping away. Unfortunately, he hadn't quite reached the bottom of the staircase and his stepping back caused his foot to slip off of the stair he was standing on; fortunately, this meant that he didn't succeed in hitting his idiot best friend.

"What are you doing?" he bellowed.

"You didn't answer my texts," Merlin shrugged, propping a casual elbow on the banister. "Figured it was easier to come over anyway."

"Why?" Arthur asked, exasperated and wary.

"There's a body in the woods," Merlin answered as if that meant something. "Well," he leaned forward, eyes shining with interest, "half a body."

"Half?" Arthur asked, curious in spite of himself.

* * *

Arthur mumbled under his breath—cursing his curiosity, his choice in best friends (not that it had been much of a choice on his part, he maintained), the weather, the dark, the woods in general, and whatever psycho killed someone and apparently cut them in half—as he and Merlin stumbled through the woods in the cold half an hour later.

"The sheriff's office is plenty staffed to find a body on their own," he tried (again).

"You sound more like Your Father The Mayor every time you say that," Merlin answered flippantly. Arthur could hear the trademark Sarcastic Capitals Merlin always used to refer to his father and clenched his jaw.

"My _point_ —" He startled when it came out louder than he intended in the foggy hush of the woods, and quieted his next words, probably more than necessary. "—is that if we don't join them, it's not going to matter. Two high schoolers are not going to make a difference either way."

When Merlin completely ignored his perfectly rational attempt, he stopped walking and waited. After a few steps, Merlin halted as well and swung around with a barely suppressed sigh. Eyes narrowing, Arthur demanded, "Why are we out here?"

"Because it's weird!" Merlin burst out, flinging his arms up with the force of it. "Who cuts somebody in half?" When Arthur didn't catch what he was getting at, he stepped closer, voice turning persuasive. "Look, something weird is going on, okay? And somebody's gotta figure it out. And the sheriff's department is great and all, but the last remotely similar thing that happened—in terms of people getting killed in weird circumstances—was that house fire a few years back and that was an accident. The last time there was a murder in Beacon Hills was over a decade ago, and it happened in front of eight witnesses, and the guy was still there when the deputies got there, so there wasn't even an investigation. The sheriff's department has no idea what they're getting into."

"And you do?" Arthur asked, trying not to sound as skeptical as he was.

"I'm good at research," Merlin practically pouted. "And I'm good at patterns. And—" He huffed a frustrated sigh, scuffing a shoe through the dirt. "Okay, so maybe I don't _exactly_ know what I'm doing either, but more heads are better than fewer and I can't just do nothing and—"

Arthur sighed, sweeping his flashlight through the trees briefly before picking a direction that looked good and starting forward. "So which half was it?"

He could feel Merlin vibrating in victory behind him.

* * *

The dog came out of nowhere.

Arthur, of course, didn't scream; Merlin screamed like a girl, for way longer than necessary.

It was his fault that he got busted.

Arthur was resolutely not feeling guilty about it.

"Merlin," the sheriff sighed when all the yelling and barking died down.

"Evening, Sheriff," Merlin answered cheerily. "Nice night for a stroll."

"Uh-huh." The sheriff did not sound at all convinced of Merlin's innocence.

A flashlight beam swept past Arthur's hiding place, just barely missing him.

"Where's your partner in crime?" the sheriff asked, dry and too knowing.

"Who?" Merlin asked, dripping with innocence.

There was a pause.

Arthur felt a growing urge to fidget and Merlin must have been feeling something similar, because he burst out, "I resent the implication inherent in the term 'partner in crime,' because I am _not_ in fact any kind of criminal and neither is anyone else I know. Or not that I know of. I guess I wouldn't know if they were, because I think that's kinda the point, ya know, but anyway. What, is it a crime to stroll through the woods now? In a publicly owned nature preserve with hiking trails and parking spots and all? I think not. So I'll be on my way, then. Good day, gentleman." Arthur could hear him start to walk away. "Or night, rather. You know what? Good night _and_ a good day tomorrow. How's that?"

"I'll just walk you back to your jeep then," the sheriff said, mild.

"Oh, that's not necessary. I'm sure you're very busy . . . walking your dogs."

"I think it is necessary," the sheriff said.

 _Great_ , Arthur thought as the deputies moved off and Merlin's chatter started to fade into the distance. _Guess I'm walking home alone._

* * *

The next dog didn't quite come out of nowhere, but only because it was preceded by a stampede of deer and his tripping over a dead body while stumbling out of their way.

Well, half a body.

The dog had glowing red eyes, appeared with an unearthly howl, and seemed half-made out of shadows in the ghostly light of the mostly full moon filtering through the trees, but that had to be his imagination, stirred up by the perfectly reasonable and mild hysteria of having been trampled by deer and then stumbling literally, physically _onto_ a half a naked dead girl and _meeting her eyes_ (sort of).

He did scream that time, but only because it bit him.

And because it occurred to him that it might not have been a dog.

* * *

Working at the clinic turned out to be the best decision he'd ever made, because there was no way he was going to the hospital and having to explain any of this to anyone, let alone his dad (who _would_ get involved, whether he told him or the information made its way from hospital staff on up); at least this way he had the skills to deal with it with no one else the wiser. The only person who could know anything about what happened last night was Merlin, and that was only because _he was entirely to blame_.

"Hey," Merlin greeted, half-chewed bite of breakfast on display, as Arthur pulled himself into the jeep the next morning.

"I tripped over the other half of the body and landed on a partially rotten dead girl and then got bit by a possibly rabid dog or wolf or something last night because of you," Arthur snapped, feeling his anger rising again now that the topic had come up.

"What?"

"Chew with your mouth closed." Merlin automatically complied, but continued to stare at him like an idiot. Arthur smacked him on the back of the head. "Drive, idiot."

Merlin choked on his breakfast and put the jeep in gear. Once they were on the road, Merlin made a circular gesture at Arthur, crumbs flying from the muffin he held in that hand; Arthur snatched it away, tore off a good chunk, and returned the rest, popping his prize in his mouth.

Merlin had apparently swallowed, or at least stopped choking and spraying crumbs, because he said, "You _cannot_ just leave me hanging like that. What _happened_?"

Arthur took his time chewing and swallowing and reminded Merlin "Breakfast" before he got around to answering, more collected now that he'd blown off his initial steam (and it was daylight).

"I was walking home—alone, in the cold, without transportation, _thank you_ —"

"You're welcome."

"Crumbs. And these deer just came out of nowhere, stampeding like crazy. It was like they were being chased by a mountain lion or something. A couple of them ran right over me."

"Oh wow," Merlin interjected, spraying more crumbs than necessary just to get under Arthur's skin. Arthur snatched the rest of his muffin away in revenge. Merlin pulled another one out of the pocket of his hoodie and made eye contact with Arthur while he took a big bite.

" _Anyway_ ," Arthur continued, graciously ignoring his urge to snatch the second muffin and toss it out the window, "I was trying to get out of their way when I literally tripped over her and landed right on top of her."

"Gross," Merlin added helpfully.

"And I think they were being chased by something, because after they were gone there was this howl that made all my hair stand up and then this dog or wolf or something just showed up out of nowhere and attacked me. I fought him off, but he bit me before he took off."

"Bad?" Merlin asked, frowning in concern. "The bite."

"Sunk his teeth right in," Arthur elaborated, feeling vindicated by Merlin's wince. "Bled for a while. But he didn't tear any chunks out or anything, and it was just the one bite; nothing that needed stitches, nothing I couldn't patch up myself."

"Uh, if it had rabies, you definitely need to get a shot," Merlin said in what Arthur referred to alternately as his Mom Voice or his Smarter Than You Voice.

Arthur sighed. "It probably didn't have rabies," he relented. "I was just mad."

Merlin nodded like he'd known all along. Arthur really hated him sometimes.

"It probably was a wolf, though," he added, to save face and make Merlin feel bad.

"No, it wasn't," Merlin declared, brushing crumbs onto the floor.

"Excuse me?"

Merlin still didn't even bother to look at him or put any effort into the argument. "There haven't been any wolves in California in, like, seventy years."

"It was a wolf," Arthur insisted.

"It wasn't a wolf."

"It howled."

Merlin shrugged. Arthur gritted his teeth and refused to speak to him for the rest of the drive to school.

* * *

_Tap-tap. Tap-tap._

A harsh staccato followed immediately by a slightly quieter slap, each loud enough that Arthur felt them in his eardrums; he glanced around, but no one else seemed to notice the sound in spite of its near-deafening volume, still carrying on as they waited for the bell to announce the beginning of class.

_Tap-tap. Tap-tap._

Regular, and somehow forceful. It sounded vaguely familiar, but Arthur couldn't place it, couldn't think past the feel of that sound pinging straight through his eardrums and reverberating through his skull.

And it was getting louder with every repetition.

_Tap-tap. Tap-tap. TAP-TAP. TAP-TAP. TAP-TAP._

And then it paused.

In his relief, Arthur almost missed the principal tipping his head in through the open door and announcing a new student to the teacher. He didn't miss when the sound started up again, in sync with the new student sashaying a few steps forward and sweeping the room with a cool gaze.

Heels, his brain finally connected. Heels on the hard floor of the hallway and now the classroom, first the spiky bit and then the flat bit.

The shoes he now realized he was staring at stopped just a few feet away and he raised his eyes to find the owner staring at him with an eyebrow raised and the faintest hints of a smirk hidden away all over her face. He flushed, and she outright smiled and slid gracefully into the seat in front of him.

Arthur thunked his head onto the desk in front of him and ignored the teacher as she started talking. He was so going to die of embarrassment.

* * *

The smells hit him next. Not bad, just . . . strong. So strong they were overwhelming, like the sound of the high heels a few minutes earlier. So strong he found himself shuddering and huffing out a forceful breath like that would help.

He reluctantly raised his head and sat back in his seat, scanning the room for the source of the scents, but just like before there was no obvious source and no one else seemed to even notice it.

Trying to rub away the forming headache, Arthur continued to scan the classroom, paying closer and closer attention to the details. He didn't have any luck until the new girl shifted in her seat and there was a fresh wave of . . . all the scents at the same time.

He tried leaning as far back in his seat as he could, so far back that other students gave him weird looks and the teacher glared; the scents were all just as strong as before. He tried burying his head in his arms next. Breathing through his mouth. Subtly pulling the collar of his shirt up over his nose. Popping a breath mint and breathing forcefully to create a pocket of minty fresh scent. Nothing tamed the overwhelming scents that continued to waft in fresh waves every time she moved, which unfortunately happened _every time she breathed_.

Unable to get rid of the smells, he tried to figure out what they were. The biggest smells were a handful of chemical-y smells like laundry detergent and shampoo and toothpaste and a bunch more Arthur couldn't begin to figure out; three of those also came from her purse, but fainter. Then there was car exhaust and a weird, musty, motor-y smell that he knew the second he smelled it came from the heating vents of her car. She'd had bacon and eggs and toast and strawberries for breakfast, she'd used salt and pepper (probably on the eggs), and she had a banana and a granola bar in her purse for a snack. And underneath all of it was a smell that smelled like a person, so was probably her natural scent, and something tangy and electric that fizzed in his nose and down his spine.

Once he'd identified them, they started to fade a little, like he'd gotten used to them, and he shook it off.

She was pretty. Brains did weird things when pretty girls were involved.

* * *

On his way to second period, Arthur stopped at the sign-up sheet for lacrosse tryouts after school and for cross-country and turning his thoughts toward sports apparently had an effect: he could smell the locker room like he was in the middle of it instead of outside and down the hall a little, stronger than he remembered, and he could hear Coach muttering to himself and moving things around, in his office, further down the hall.

Puberty made such weird things happen.

Arthur had thought he was done with all that.

* * *

All through second period, Audrey Morrison could not stop chewing and popping her gum obnoxiously loud. Everybody else was too polite to do anything about it.

* * *

Someone had been feeling especially unwell in the boys' bathroom.

* * *

In third period, Lana Delancey smelled weird and Paul Stewart sat behind him and took notes ridiculously loud. The teacher couldn't very well be expected to get on him for the way his pencil scratched across his paper at ten times the normal volume somehow, but he really should have done something about that . . . well, it was too loud to be called tapping, but whatever he was doing with his pencil in between note-taking.

* * *

Lunch was a nightmare. Everyone was talking ridiculously loud and the smell of that many people in a small space on top of the smell of meatloaf surprise was irritating beyond belief.

And then _she_ walked in, alongside Gwen Smith like they'd been friends forever, and suddenly he could hear the two of them, even over the crowd, even over Merlin who was right next to him and more or less talking to him.

Turns out, Gwen had known her forever, that the new girl had lived in Beacon Hills when she was little and moved away in elementary school and she and Gwen had been friends.

That was all he was able to get before Merlin smacked him in the arm with the back of his hand. "Dude! Dude! That's Morgana Le Fay!"

Arthur turned, growl already forming behind clenched teeth when he realized Merlin was looking at _her_. His irritation vanished. "What?"

Merlin hit him again in excitement without looking. "You remember the Le Fays? Weird hippy people who lived out where the Preserve is now? They were this big family, but they weren't all actually related, and there was that one lady that would read palms and Morgana's mom would give weird advice that somehow always worked. Remember? Morgana was home-schooled like the rest of them until the third grade and then she came to school with us and I had the _biggest_ crush on her and then the fire happened and she had to leave to go live with her aunt or older sister or something."

Oh. Right. Morgana. Arthur had vague memories of Merlin rambling on about a shiny black braid and a girl who kicked bullies and of Merlin getting in trouble for picking flowers from Old Man Simpkins garden (repeatedly); Arthur's dad had said that family was a bunch of no-good vagabonds and Satanists, so he'd never spent much time around her himself.

He'd forgotten all about her before today.

Probably all the weird things that happened with her in first period was his memory trying to place her; that explained everything.

* * *

Merlin had that same tangy, electric, fizzy scent that Morgana had. Weird.

Well, Merlin was kind of a girl, maybe it was some kind of girly thing like lotion or something.

* * *

Shelly Rivers and Lincoln Cartwright spent the entire next period discussing their relationship in whatever the technically-whispering equivalent of not at all subtle or quiet is. Why the teacher didn't call them out on it, why everyone else pretended like they couldn't hear it, and why anyone would discuss something so private in a room full of people without even attempting to make sure nobody could hear it, Arthur would never know.

* * *

Were the period bells always that loud?

* * *

Arthur could hear the clicking of the combination lock on his locker every time he spun it, even over the crowded hallway. And the ones on either side of his locker. And on the other side of those. If he concentrated, he could hear the locks on the whole row.

That's what happened when the school bought cheap equipment in bulk.

That didn't explain how he could hear the sloshing of the dregs of coffee in the bottom of Cindy Marshall's cup from ten feet away, but that wasn't important.

* * *

Okay, so Arthur hadn't exactly spent the summer partying or hanging around with large groups of friends, but it's not like he'd been locked up somewhere silent and needed to adjust back to normal human interaction. The animals at the shelter were plenty loud, especially at feeding time, and he never got a headache like the one he was sporting now from what everyone else (even Merlin) seemed to think was an ordinary school day.

* * *

Even with a steadily increasing headache and the distracting sounds of Gatorade sloshing in bottles, shoes crunching in grass, the fabric of uniforms swishing and scraping, and what sounded disturbingly like hearts beating, Arthur still performed fantastically in tryouts.

So fantastically he somehow body-checked Anton Shuester ten feet across the pitch, with (according to Merlin, Coach, and the disturbed mutterings of his teammates) at least three feet of ground clearance.

The worst part was that at the moment he'd body-checked him, he'd been so boiling mad, so aggressive, that he'd actually _wanted_ to hurt him. And just because he'd executed a frankly beautiful steal, which is what he was supposed to do in tryouts and which Arthur would normally respond to by subtly reminding everyone that he was the best player at the next convenient opportunity.

* * *

Arthur had heard something once that went something like this: "Once is an incident, twice is a coincidence, but three times is a pattern."

If three times is a pattern, what is more? Because if Arthur was being honest, there had been a lot more than three weird things today.

A _lot_ more.

By the time he and Merlin left school, headed for the woods to find the body so they could let the sheriff's department know an actual location, Arthur was at his wit's end. _Something_ was definitely happening, even if he didn't know what; he was pretty sure of that by now.

His first thought, naturally, was rabies, but a quick google on his phone while mostly ignoring Merlin's rambling ruled that out.

Merlin, never one to tolerate being ignored, swerved the jeep violently and briefly on the empty road, jostling Arthur hard against the door frame. Arthur instantly moved to smack him, which Merlin fended off spouting some nonsense about justification and the bro code. They devolved into an outright tussle, during which Merlin started yelling . . . something and Arthur got progressively angrier until in a blind rage he got a hold on Merlin's head and smashed it hard into the steering wheel.

The burning rage turned instantly to ice in his veins and he sat frozen as Merlin slowed the jeep to a stop on the side of the road, one hand clutched to his head.

They sat in stunned, tense silence for a long second, then Merlin pulled his hand away, red with blood and started probing at his injury, hissing, while he adjusted the rearview mirror to see it.

"Let me see it," Arthur said, reaching out.

Merlin didn't answer, didn't look at him, just jerked away with a scowl into the mirror.

"Merlin, don't be an idiot," Arthur said, trying to sound firm instead of shaken.

Merlin finally turned to him, slow and stiff, eyes practically glowing in a rare show of actual anger. "Me?" he demanded, quiet and controlled. " _Me? Me_ don't be an idiot." He held out the hand dripping with blood. " _I_ didn't do this. _I_ didn't knock my best friend's head into the steering wheel _while he was driving_. _I_ haven't been acting like a complete jerk and a crazy person all day."

"I'm sorry," Arthur mumbled, meek in a way very few ever manage to make him feel.

"You're sorry," Merlin scoffed, turning back to the mirror.

Then he paused, breathed out a forceful breath. "Look," he said in a patient tone, "I know you had a rough night last night, and I know you blame me. But this?" He turned to Arthur again, showing him the gash on his head on top of what was already a swelling bump. "This is not cool."

"I'm sorry," Arthur tried again.

"You could have done serious damage to the jeep, man. And you _know_ the jeep is sacred."

Arthur resisted the urge to smile. "I'm sorry."

"Hand me the first aid kit."

Arthur got the kit out, but instead of handing it to Merlin, he opened it up on his own lap and reached out, physically turning Merlin's head towards him and smacking his hand away from the injury to examine it with a critical eye.

"For the hundredth time," Merlin began, rolling his eyes and very clearly regretting it immediately, "you are not actually more qualified to treat a minor injury on a person than I am."

"For the hundredth time," Arthur parroted back, pausing in his work to make sure Merlin could see him rolling his eyes; Merlin jabbed him hard in the ribs in retaliation. "A fully qualified vet tech who has had to use the first aid kits you have stashed in your jeep and both of our houses more times than I can count to patch up my clumsy idiot of a best friend definitely trumps clumsy idiot son of a nurse and volunteer vet tech assistant. You can't learn medicine by osmosis." He paused to trade out the alcohol wipes for butterfly bandages. "Besides, you have a head injury."

"Are you sure you don't?" Merlin asked dryly.

Arthur nearly denied it automatically, but it was a possibility. Eventually, he grudgingly settled on, "I have a headache."

Merlin hummed acknowledgement, but Arthur doubted he fully grasped the situation.

"A really, really bad headache. And all these sounds and smells have been . . . really loud. All day."

"The smells have been really loud?" Merlin teased.

Arthur smacked him in the back of the head.

"I'm serious!" Merlin protested. When Arthur shot him a look, he amended, "Okay, partly serious. Really bad headache plus sensitivity to sounds and smells could be a migraine. Did you see anything weird? Were lights a problem?"

"No," Arthur said consideringly. "Nothing weird visually."

"Okay," Merlin said, thinking face on, as he reached for an extra alcohol wipe and started cleaning up the blood that Arthur hadn't gotten. "So tell me what happened."

* * *

"That is definitely not any migraine I've ever heard of," Merlin announced decisively, once Arthur had rambled on out of order for probably half an hour while they tramped through the woods. "Plus you're leaving out some symptoms. Moodiness or out of character behaviour or whatever you wanna call it, for starters, which is a symptom of migraines and a whole lot of other things. Maybe it's something to do with adrenaline? 'Cause that would make you more alert to smells and sounds so that you could be aware of danger, and it would make you more . . . aggressive and less . . . in control, and it would also make you stronger than normal, like when you chucked Anton halfway across the field."

"It was not halfway across the field," Arthur protested.

"Sure," Merlin said dismissively, clearly already moving on to another line of thought. "Are you lost?"

"I am not lost."

"You keep saying that, but we're still wandering around the woods."

"It looks a little different in daylight, _Mer_ -lin."

* * *

They never found the body.

They did come across Morgana Le Fay, who coldly informed them that they were on private property, demanded that they leave, and completely ignored Merlin's pitiful attempts at flirting.

It was highly amusing and did not at all stop him from waxing poetic about her beauty and intelligence and soul or something the entire trek back through the woods and on to the clinic.

* * *

When Arthur removed the bandage on his side to get in the shower before bed, he found unbroken skin.

So his hysteria after stumbling onto the dead girl had made him feel and see a worse injury than he actually had, whatever. The good news was that he was obviously fine, so he was just going to focus on that.

* * *

And then he woke up the next morning lying in damp dirt and leaves in the middle of the woods in nothing but his pajama pants, dirt underneath the nails of both his fingers and his toes, the taste of blood in his mouth, and vague, haunting memories of odd and terrifying dreams.

* * *

"Six miles?"

"Yes," Arthur gritted out, "six miles from my house." He'd barely made it back to the house and through his morning routine before Merlin showed up for the drive to school.

"Shirtless."

"And barefoot, yes."

"Tell me what you remember about your dreams."

Arthur growled low in his throat in frustration (Merlin shot him a weird look), then took a deep breath and huffed it out in one big gust. "It's just flashes. I was in the woods and sometimes I was chasing something, sometimes I was being chased by something. I don't know what."

"The same something?" Merlin asked. "Like tag?"

Arthur glared. "What about anything I've told you already gave you the impression it was anything like a kid's game?"

"Like a twisted version of tag?" Merlin tried again. "High stakes tag? Trading 'it' with a serial killer?"

"More like a monster," Arthur muttered, suppressing the urge to shudder.

Merlin tilted his head consideringly. "More on that." He took another bite of his banana.

Arthur squinted. "What?"

Merlin gestured loosely with his banana, struggling to adjust his too-large mouthful so he could talk. "You're trying to remember details and it's not happening, but you've still got _impressions_ of things, so go into that." He paused to adjust his mouthful again. "Trust your gut."

Arthur sighed and looked out the window, losing focus as he tried to remember.

"He was angry," he said finally. "And . . . strong. Stronger than me, and not just physically. And . . . dark. Evil. He wanted me to . . . do something for him or with him, but I don't . . ."

"That's okay," Merlin said, quiet. "That's good. Anything else?"

"It was like he was playing a game with me," Arthur whispered. "Like he was . . ."

"Amused?" Merlin tried.

"Yeah."

"Well," Merlin said, trying for joking but sounding a little too rattled to pull it off, "that can't be good."

* * *

"Hey," Merlin huffed, flopping down next him at lunch, "what time would you say you left your house last night?"

Arthur eyed him. "I don't know. I told you, I don't remember anything after getting into bed. Why?"

Merlin hummed, distracted, and made no move to answer further, except to shake his head and laugh to himself a few seconds later. Arthur rolled his eyes.

* * *

"Can you catch the bus home?" Merlin asked just as they were finishing up lunch.

He had that distracted, brain-churning look that usually meant he was knee-deep in a new "project" of some kind, so Arthur rolled his eyes and agreed without questions.

Merlin would tell him what was up when he was ready.

* * *

"Did anything happen last night?" Merlin burst out the second Arthur opened the passenger door. Well, that explained why he'd been practically vibrating the whole time Arthur had been walking from the house to the jeep.

"Yeah," Arthur muttered. "I woke up in the same place again like fifteen minutes ago. Didn't even have time to shower. Do you have any extra breakfast?"

"No," Merlin said, distracted again. "I got a late start this morning, too. Forgot to bring anything." He reached over and plucked a twig from Arthur's hair. "You woke up six miles from the house fifteen minutes ago?"

"Yeah, according to my watch," Arthur checked his watch again reflexively as he said it, running his other hand through his hair for any more debris.

"And you ran all the way here," Merlin said, with an odd inflection.

Arthur squinted at him. "Yeah. What?" Merlin just sort of shrugged and shook his head. "What are you waiting for? We're going to be late already, especially if we try to find something to eat."

"Yeah," Merlin said, completely distracted now but putting the jeep into gear nevertheless. Without looking at Arthur, he mentioned fake-casually, "You realize you're not even breathing hard?"

"What?"

"Six miles in less than fifteen minutes—'cause you also had to get dressed, right? And knowing you, pack your bags for school. And you're not even breathing hard."

"I'm in good shape," Arthur shrugged, feeling suddenly uncomfortable and self-conscious.

* * *

On his way to lunch, Merlin grabbed him and bothered him into the nearest bathroom, hustling him past stalls as he pushed open the doors and looked in every single one.

"What are you doing?" Arthur asked, hungry and annoyed.

"Just a sec." He pushed open another door and startled Greenburg, demanding he get out; Merlin could be a little intense when he was really focused on something, and poor Greenburg scrammed, vocally warning someone who was apparently trying to enter as he was leaving.

Merlin hustled both of them into the handicapped stall, locking the door behind them, and turned on Arthur, hands reaching for his shirt. "Let me see the bite."

"Woah," Arthur said, startled and backing away while he tried to fend off Merlin's hands. "What? Wait."

But Merlin persisted until Arthur was pressed against the (oh, gross) wall and gave up, trying to breath shallowly against the overwhelming scent of pee and sweat and weed. Merlin lifted his shirt and glared at the spot for a second before asking, in a tone that sounded angry and a little scared, "This is where it was, right? You showed me the bandage and it was right here."

He poked the exact spot and Arthur looked down on reflex, like he didn't already know what he was going to see.

"Oh, yeah," Arthur said, sheepish and aiming for casual. "I forgot to tell you. It must not have been as bad as I thought. It's all healed up now."

"Must not have been as bad as you thought," Merlin repeated, studying his face.

"Yeah."

"And it healed up when?"

"Oh, uh—" Arthur thought back. "That first night? After I told you that I got bit, but before I sleep walked?"

"Less than twenty-four hours after you got bit."

"Yup."

"There was blood on the bandage when you showed me that morning." Arthur nodded agreement. "And now the skin's not even broken."

"I'm a healthy teenage boy," Arthur explained. "I heal fast."

Merlin shook his head and walked out of the stall and right out of the bathroom entirely, still shaking his head.

* * *

Merlin was waiting in the jeep when Arthur got out of the shower after practice, a grim look on his face, and as soon as Arthur got close he demanded "Get in."

"You remember that I have a shift at the clinic this afternoon, right?" Arthur asked, mildly suspicious.

Merlin shook his head. "I told Gaius you were having a health issue and weren't coming in."

Arthur sighed and grumbled, but got in. "Just because Gaius is your . . . whatever, doesn't mean you can just do that, you know," he complained.

Merlin didn't answer.

Actually, Merlin was unusually focused on driving, both hands on the steering wheel at a perfect ten and two, jaw clenched, eyes locked straight ahead. He looked like he was driving to a funeral, and Arthur started getting worried.

Merlin was . . . eccentric, but he wouldn't call Arthur out of work for nothing, so this had to be something big.

* * *

Or Merlin was losing his mind, Arthur reflected when he stepped into his best friend's bedroom to find the walls papered with notes connected by string.

"Okay," Merlin said, turning to face him and clapping his hands together like he was about to start lecturing.

And then he didn't continue, instead looking around at his latest project, overwhelmed.

"Where to start?" he said after a minute, in a strangled voice.

A column of paper in the center of one wall with his name at the top caught Arthur's eye and he stepped closer.

"Right," Merlin said, behind him now, "let's start there."

 _'There'_ being a list of the weird things that had happened to Arthur in the past few days, starting with "bitten in the woods" (with a subpoint of "rabid dog?" crossed out and changed to "WOLF?") and ending with "six miles in ten (?) minutes without breaking a sweat or breathing hard," each one connected by various strings to pieces of paper on the rest of that wall that mostly appeared to be printed blocks of text.

"What is this?"

"Remember we were talking about something weird happening to you?" Merlin said, stepping closer and picking up steam. "I think—I think I figured out what, but it's—You're—Just bear with me, okay?"

And then he was off, jumping around the room as he went over everything that had happened to Arthur and how it all fit in with this theory of his that he was very carefully not naming yet. He pointed out the bite and how it hadn't been from a rabid dog because the symptoms were inconsistent and how he hadn't thought it could be from a wolf at first because California didn't have wolves, but then that started to make a little sense and he was still trying to rationalize it away but then he "came across" a police report that said a hair found on the first half of the body had been positively identified as wolf hair, so he was pretty sure it had actually been a wolf, which totally fit with what Arthur had said about that night and the howling. He brought up the increased hearing and smell and how canines like wolves have better hearing and smell than humans. Increased strength and aggression apparently "fit" with whatever he was trying to prove, too. So did the endurance to run a couple miles with no apparent exertion. And so did the "advanced healing" which led to a bleeding wound vanishing without a trace in less than a day, which, he said, he would have had proof of on the wall if Arthur had told him about sooner.

Finally, Arthur, overwhelmed by the whirlwind of Merlin passionate about something to the point of not making much sense, cut in. "What are you saying?"

Merlin took a deep breath, stalked over and slapped a hand flat on the research stuck to the other wall. "Werewolves."

Arthur laughed. "What?"

Merlin made a face like he couldn't quite believe he was saying it himself, which is what made Arthur believe he _actually meant it_ when he said again, "Werewolves. I think you got bitten by a werewolf and now you're turning."

"Merlin—"

"No, listen. Increased senses, increased strength, increased speed and endurance, increased healing, _increased aggression_ —" He pointed to his own head as a reminder. "All starting when you got _bitten_ by a _wolf_ in the woods at night."

"That's—"

"Crazy, I _know_. But it's also the only thing that makes sense, because everything _about_ the last two days has been for real crazy and you can't deny that."

"You think I'm a werewolf."

"Yes."

Arthur scoffed, shaking his head and running a hand through his hair as he scanned the papers and string stuck to the walls. "Merlin. Werewolves aren't real."

"And bites don't just heal in a single day. And people don't just accidentally toss another person halfway across a lacrosse field. And people can't _hear heartbeats_. None of this is real; the truth has to be something that we didn't think was real, either."

"Werewolves?"

Merlin took a measuring breath, thinking face on. "Okay," he said. "Okay. One more thing. One more thing that I think can prove this, and if you still think I'm crazy I'll drop it."

Arthur eyed him. Merlin absolutely never dropped anything, but Merlin also didn't typically believe actual fairytales had come to life and he clearly knew how crazy all of this was, so maybe there was a chance . . . "Okay," Arthur agreed, against his better judgement. "What one more thing?"

"You're having dreams involving a malevolent being who feels real and you keep ending up in the same spot in the woods, right?" Arthur nodded warily. "I think that's the werewolf who bit you, which means that spot is important for some reason. Take me there and we'll see what we can find."

* * *

"Are you sure this is it?"

"Yes, Merlin."

"You're not lost?"

Arthur glared.

"Okay, fine, so this is where you've ended up when the werewolf has chased you in your dreams."

Merlin started poking around in the piles of leaves, touching trees, staring off into the distance. At some point, he started moving vaguely in the direction of Arthur's house, continuing his inspection.

"What do you think you're going to find?" Arthur asked after a few minutes.

Merlin hummed distractedly. Arthur huffed in irritation, but continued following dutifully behind.

Until he smelled something.

His nose twitched with it and he found himself wandering off, following the scent, before he consciously registered it. He stopped once he realized and glanced back at Merlin who was watching him like a hawk and following behind.

"Looks like you found something," Merlin said insufferably. He made a broad gesture with both hands. "Go on."

Arthur huffed at him, but went back to following the scent.

It was a dead rabbit, torn apart, pieces spilled everywhere. Merlin gagged at the sight of it and had to look away, but Arthur found his attention locked on as _something_ nudged at his brain. There was something familiar about this.

On instinct, he looked up sharply to his left, feeling a sharp, tearing pain through his side as he did so. His hand came up to cradle the spot and he glanced down, but he was fine there wasn't . . . He suddenly realized he'd been expecting blood without knowing why and remembered Merlin's advice from the other day. _'Trust your gut.'_

Okay. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath and leaned into the instinct.

He'd been here before, crouched over this rabbit. He could smell it, fresh, and feel it warm on his fingers. Had he killed it? No, he was curious, but he thought he'd found it that way. Who had killed it then? And then he was there, pouncing, swiping claws over Arthur's side, ripping him open and Arthur ran . . . in exactly the direction he wanted him to.

He snapped his eyes open and found himself breathing hard and sweating, the sting of his nails digging into his palms. He uncurled his fingers and looked down to find claws, long and sharp and hard and dark and coated in a layer of blood, and already healing crescents in his palms.

"What is happening to me?" he whispered, feeling and hearing his voice breaking.

And Merlin was there, folding his own hands around Arthur's. "You got bit," he said steadily. "You're turning into a werewolf."

"I'm a freak," Arthur croaked.

"You're not alone," Merlin said.

Arthur looked up at the assurance and Merlin's eyes were glowing gold as the leaves around them picked up and danced.

"You're not alone," Merlin whispered.

**Author's Note:**

> Any fans of Teen Wolf will have hopefully recognized what fandom this is a fusion with, even though Greenburg is the only Teen Wolf character to explicitly make an appearance (I know, I know). So for those who have watched both, or at least Teen Wolf: Arthur is Scott. Merlin is Stiles. Morgana is somehow parts of Allison, Lydia, and Derek combined. Morgause is parts of Laura and parts of Peter; Cenred is also Peter; the dead girl was either one of Cenred's wolves killed by hunters or one of Cenred's victims (or both, I wouldn't put it past him). Uther is pretty much all the Argents and also the mayor (Morgana is still his daughter, and both he and she know it, though he doesn't know she knows, as far as I know). Gaius is Deaton and just as cryptic and unhelpful; he has known Merlin had magic all along and known of the magic and larger supernatural communities, but has not told Merlin any of it to protect him (Merlin suspects he knows about the magic but not the rest of it; Arthur doesn't know any of this); both Arthur and Merlin work at the clinic. The sheriff is probably Leon and the rest of the knights are maybe deputies. Freya is basically Malia. Roscoe the jeep was Merlin's dad's; both Merlin and Hunith believe he is dead, though I don't know for sure if that's true. Mordred is, I don't know, Cora.
> 
> May or may not add to this 'verse in the future; I have no idea.
> 
> Hope you enjoyed it! As always, comments, critiques, and constructive criticisms are more than welcome!
> 
> Have an interesting day!
> 
> M1ssUnd3rst4nd1ng


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